


Little Kwok's

by greenjudy



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-19
Updated: 2010-08-19
Packaged: 2017-10-11 04:06:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/108192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenjudy/pseuds/greenjudy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"That's bonding, that is," the kid said.  "That's bodily fluid-level bonding."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Kwok's

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place after the events of Season One, Episode Three.

Late in the afternoon, having scraped up the energy to sort out breakfast at last, John undoes the foil edge of his fried rice, peeling off the paper cover. Bits of barbecued pork gleam like fragments of a false sunrise, precisely the wrong color to be real. Outside, fat flakes of snow are falling; all action outdoors suppressed. There's a constraint, a hush he can feel through the windows.

"Limpet," Donovan's nicknamed him, now: "Oi, Freak's here, he's brought his limpet." Limpets, John thinks, might be sea-going creatures, something like barnacles, but he's not sure. He is pretty sure they don't normally cling to freaks, but Sally Donovan has never been that careful about her metaphors.

"Joined at the hip," Sarah had noted. That was when she turned him down a third time. "You two are just—look, John, I'm sorry, I _do_ like you, Lord knows I do, but I'm not up for a love triangle right now."

"It's not like that," he tried to say.

"No?" she asked. "What is it like, then? Six out of nine dates, John, and he's been there in some capacity—that last time he was _wearing a dress."_

"It was case-related," he said helplessly. "Sarah, listen. We're not—"

"Dear John," she said quietly, "you don't understand. It's gone too far now. If you are or if you aren't, it doesn't make a difference. Not to _him."_

John carefully unrolls the paper napkin, extracting the plastic fork. Round peas, square carrots, and oblong slabs of cha-shiu on top, grimly shining.

"Are you jonesing for him, then?" asked the kid at the dry-cleaners.

"No," John said.

"He jonesing for you?"

"No!"

"Poor sod," the kid said. John wasn't sure whom he meant. "Flatmates, yeah?"

"Yes."

"You got blown up together, yeah? At Reichenbach Swim last month."

"Well, yes, technically," John said.

"That's bonding, that is," the kid said. "That's bodily fluid-level bonding."

"I'm not really—"

"Every week, you give me detailed instructions about another man's laundry. You're not jonesing for him, then?"

"How," John asked, "did this get to be your business, exactly?"

"I do the laundry, mon," the kid replied, eyes wide. "Stains and all. That's how."

"Christ," John said.

The fried rice is so salty that John can feel his pores closing.

"Still snowing."

"God, so it is. You're brilliant," John says. "That was fantastic."

"Yes, well, I've been awake all day, unlike _some_ people. It's been traumatic. There has been fuck-all to do, and I've done it all twice. I can't imagine how you can sleep through all this intolerable hell of snow."

"Thirty-two solid hours," John says, "in pursuit of Noel Cecnik."

"Who? Oh, him. That was yesterday. Crime, what have you done for me lately?"

"My heart bleeds."

"And well it should. Gimme."

"What?"

He's there, hair askew, leaning out of his dressing-gown, stretching across John; he takes the fork from his hand.

"Jesus, get your own fork at least," John says.

"Kitchen's too far away."

"You just _came_ from there."

"What have we here? Ah: pork fried rice from Little Kwok's," he says. "I know this. Awful, yet strangely addictive."

"It's the MSG."

"That's what all doctors say." Sherlock drops to the couch beside him. "Why don't you just admit," handing John back the fork, "how much you love it?"

"I love it," John says, simply, and takes a bite.

Sherlock gently retrieves the fork.

"Was it that hard to say?"

"No," says John. "Not really. Not so bad. No."

They eat in silence, taking turns.


End file.
